Philip's announcement in the Town Hall

Well considering the fact that Ebay owns PAYPAL wich has so many problems that go far beyond bugs and lag....yes.

hmmm that is a very scary thought....if we don't utter the name then it can't come to pass.

arrrgg!!!! I hate when people do this. Now I'm going to spend all day racking my brains trying to figure out who the heck you are talking about!!

And woohoo!! Congratulations LL!! Now you can give out whole Turkeys for Christmas Bounuses!! hehe

I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I joined SL in August and have been loving it....the creative possibilities, the tools, the people, the environment. I haven't been around long enough to really say what direction I'd like to see SL head towards but I think the millions means that we'll all be able to log into to SL for quite some time to come.

Spare me your penguin propoganda. If linux was as shit hot as you say it is, redhat would take over microsoft. But it's not.

Well... perhaps if PC suppliers were legally obliged to bundle preinstalled RedHat on all their PCs, it would...

Hahah, I can't decide whether or not this is a troll. I'll bite anyway:

The success of a corporate interest has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the product. What is far more important for a corporate interest is successful marketing. Penguin propaganda, indeed.

Chris

Dear Naysayers:

more money---> more and better resources for LL---> the ability to hire enough people to take care of the complaints---> happier, more positive players---> happier, more positive SL.


So I hope.


Also. I am deeply shocked at how negative the responses to this are, overall.
Games are expensive to develop.
As much as i'm sure everyone would like sl to have the cachet of claiming "WE DID IT AND ALL ON $150.00!!!!" , it's impossible.
CLEARLY L.L. needs help scaling this beast. It's not far fetched to think this is the assistance that could enable them to actually do it.

...or...have SLers become so used to complaining that the thought that things might ACTUALLY get fixed like someone stealing thier needle?

*shrug* either way. I'm happy for them whether you are or not, because they are clearly happy about it.

Edited Because I'm Not Done Yet:

Also, keep in mind that, as long as any of us have been playing, planning and production have been going on a LOT longer. YEARS invested in this at this point- obviously everyone feels differently about this, but I for one TRUST L.L. to make informed decisions that they believe to be the best options.
They could kick thier baby across the floor, but WHY?
It's a fool that would toss away or intentionally soil years worth of group effort. Especially when that effort's fruits are looking so promising. I dont think L.L. is perfect, but they are FAR from fools.

Ok. Done now. I will take pleasure in never never never opening this dissapointing thread again.

LOL, of course it was a troll... not even Bill Gates believes that...

I totally agree, and if the penguin wasn't complete crap 20 years away from an acceptable desktop implementation, microsoft would steal linux. it's not even worthy of MS stealing it an making their own. go compile your fonts.. pffft.

if it was good, people would use it. people try it, it sucks, they laugh at you when you tell them compiling software before you use it is normal.

I'm not even going to bother reading Philip's log, because as I said in my LiveJournal, I try to write him off as an insane Utopian. No, what I want to address are the people here, saying these insane things about business and Second Life.

Understand this, I hate clubs and malls in Second Life. They are the worst things to blight upon this game. They are a matastacizing cancer, killing the world. That said, I love Amazon.com, eBay, and being able to buy things online. I used to work at a Yahoo!Store, and loved every minute of being a part of commerce on the Internet.

Confused?

(I'm looking at Catherine and prak here...)

Commerce and industry in Second Life is such a vile thing because there's no escape from it. There's no way to play the game anymore without playing their game: buy low, sell high, attract dwell. Using the Second Life technology to create tools for a dystopic, corporate empire isn't a bad thing in and of itself. What's bad is that the entry barrier for people who don't want to treat Second Life as a job is so high, you squeeze out any new the creative tinkerers, tinkerers like those who created the world.

I'm getting tired of people saying businesses are bad or Second Life is bad for wanting to run a business or we're all doomed for Second Life being a business. All that is untrue. If Second Life and the creative spirit within it are doomed, it's because those who want to relax and tinker aren't given the room to grow, unlike the rest of the Internet; where there's open pastures for both Corporate Devils and Utopian Angels.

Bravo Neph! Thanks for saying that and I couldn't agree more!

And congratulations LL! I think this is spectacular news and it's nice to know that people with money to invest are recognizing the potential of SL... and of its community. It's especially cool that Pierre was a player before he became an investor.

You know what's far more annoying than malls, casinos, and clubs? People who constantly whine about malls, casinos, and clubs destroying the world! Some of you should be wearing "the end is nigh" placcards and babbling incoherantly at a bus stop somewhere.

Mmmmmmm. Saaaaaaand. I could live there. *makes a copy of his cage and prepares to move on in*



Sounds like OCP in the Robocop films.

"We're tearing down Second Life and building... Delta City! Oooooo! Ahhhhhh!"

But Bran, that's not the message I took away from yesterday's first Town Hall...from the way The Big Guy reminded the audience (more than once, IIRC) that stability patches were the only thing on his coding team's short list, I got the impression that he's very focused on bugs and performance issues.

- yoshi

Congratulations LL!!

My bags can be packed in an hour or two!

I tend not to post very often, especially in threads full of strife. I've been playing the game since November03. (with a "borrowed" av to begin) I have seen the changes in sl, the new players that just don't "get" it, the development of land barons, the rape of the pixeliated land.... I could go on and on. Everyone has their view of SL utopia. Mine is different from yours, yours is different from theirs. I log on, tinker a bit, fly around, chat with a few friends, go to an occasional party.

I guess I don't understand what the problem is. I have no problem building, I'm not always bothered when I am, lag tends not to be a problem for me. Yes, the clubs and casinos are an eye sore that sucks up bandwidth but I keep in mind that was the ideal for the person that built it. So, they're after money, they want to be on the leader boards. Oh, well... I have found beautiful places in SL to visit, and I even occasionally shop in the strip malls and shopping sims. There is a place for them.

What can we do about the clubs, casinos, malls, whore houses? Not a thing. SecondLife will grow in many directions. Some we'll love, some we'll hate. Hopefully the 8mil will make some wonderful changes but I know it will also make some we don't like. SecondLife will continue to grow and will continue to draw people different from the early players... After all, it is a for profit business. As it changes and the older players get fed up and leave, they will be replaced. The money, plus some, will still be there. We are replaceable.

So, what do we do? We try our best to embrace change and live with the less than savory players. They'll hopefully burn out and leave before we do. SecondLife is a wonderful escape from reality for me, it's what I make it.

"Be an enzyme - a catalyst for change. As a slogan, I don't know if that's ever going to be right up there with Ich Bin Ein Berliner, or "I Have A Dream," but there's a lot of truth to it. "

thanks for the comments - a couple of notes -

I had too many questions to ask half of them and we felt it was important to focus on the ones that were most closely related to the investment news.

Also, here is the transcript from the Town Hall.

Jarod, I would just like to ease your and others' minds a little bit in saying that the SL Exchange is actively developing ways to "level the playing field" between business and recreation in SL and make overall quality of [second] life better for everyone. In fact, our second planned service offering will directly lower this "entry barrier" you speak of.

I promise this to you.

Neph,

I agree with your post, but at the same time can understand where the fear comes from. Significant infusions of cash are always a good thing for a company, but the dark side is they often come with some change of control and direction. The fears are not unwarranted, especially when you have the word eBay being tossed around - that word is, just as it would be if Microsoft were the name being used.

Also, many SL players came from There, and watched a pretty amazing game world turned into something that had a fee added to everything and was basically destroyed by corporate greed. SL is currently definitely in an era of greed itself, though marked by player greed instead, so many people are understandably edgy. I am confident LL will not make the same mistakes other companies have made, even with disappointing missteps they have made lately regarding the stability of SL.

Overall, the investment is a good thing, as they are severely lacking in resources right now and any additional resources will help. The jury remains on whether or not this will not bring negative change as well. I am hopeful that it won't, and place my continued support in LL.

What isn't encouraging is Philip's response to the auction mess, which is basically summed up as "Lets outsource the parts we don't feel like doing anymore", regardless of the consequences.

What gets 'outsourced' next? I don't know, I'm depressed enough.

Nah personally I would rather read some words in a post then watch a sim become unusable because some idiot's dream is to have round the clock parties or build yet another homage to the Mall of the Americas, no matter how adversely it affects everyone around them. Complaining in a post doesn't affect anyone's SL experience, whereas clubs/malls/casinos have had a very tangible effect on the players who own land around them. To each his own, I suppose.

Ehehehe.
Uma indeed is the bomb.

Well it's not like you have a biased opinion or anything I personally find it annoying that people are so self absorbed that they can't just congratulate LL for securing such a massive infusion of resources and instead immediately go into the doom and gloom routine or their personal paranoia. It's tiresome. You have legitimate reasons to have strong opinions about malls and clubs since you probably have the worst luck of anyone when it comes to owning land, but your problems are representative of a tiny minority and do not reflect most people's experience. An intelligent discussion of the impact of malls and clubs has its place. That place doesn't happen to be this thread in my humble opinion. Those people who take this very good news and instantly see it as a harbinger of doom are people who've had a completely pessimistic view of SL for a long time now, and this is just another opportunity to wave those "the end is nigh" signs. I'm still trying to figure out what Maxx's comment even means. It's understandable to have some concerns about any strings attached to the VC money, but rant about those things if and when they start to happen. Right now just let LL bask in what they consider some great news... which most rational people would consider good news.

The $8M news was just posted here on Slashdot!

It links to:

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/10/sop_ii_not_exac.html
http://lindenlab.com/press_story_18.php

~Ulrika~